Free Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind by Anne Charnock Page B

for an assistant.”
    “Ah! But a dowry chest painted by Paolo Uccello”—he turns and smiles to his wife—“will help any negotiation, don’t you think? Whether I’m haggling over a husband or negotiating with your aunt’s abbess.”

    Antonia sits by a niche in the wall of her small bedchamber, her prayer book open in her lap. There’s a small painting hanging inside the niche. It’s an image of the Madonna with her infant child, and in front of the painting there’s a scattering of pink petals, which Antonia collected from the courtyard. When she hears the servant girl’s footsteps on the stairs, she knows her father is ready to teach her again, and as the girl calls, “Your father—” Antonia is out of her chair and racing down to his study. As she hurries, two stairs at a time, she wonders how many girls on the long Via della Scala are allowed, as she is, to enter their fathers’ studies.
    She trips at the entrance to the room, rights herself. “What are we doing today, Father?”
    She finds him reaching up; he’s tacking a large line drawing to the shoulder-height wooden shelf that runs the length of the room. “It’s one of your battle paintings,” she says, excited.
    “It’s the final drawing for the painting. Now, I don’t want to talk about the story in this work. This test of observation is different from the lesson on Noah and the flood. In fact, for today, you must forget the subject. I particularly want you to see the arrangement of things.”
    Antonia’s jaw drops. “The arrangement . . . ?”
    With the drawing secured, he turns and stares at her, hard. “A painting is just an arrangement of things. Understand?”
    “But who did you paint this battle for, Father? And where is the painting now? Is it somewhere grand? In a palazzo?”
    “It belongs to the banker Lionardo Bartolini, and it hangs with its two sister paintings in his palazzo on Via Porta Rossa where it meets the Via Monaldo. Close to here. But I tell you, Antonia, wherever the painting hangs, now or in the future, I am in command of whosoever casts an eye towards The Battle of San Romano .”
    She presses her palm to her forehead. “How do you command someone when you’re not there in the Bartolini palazzo?”
    “Prepare to be enlightened. Pay attention, child. I want you to close your eyes, and open them only when I say so.” He takes a seat by the drawing and faces into the room. He wants to watch her eyes, to follow her gaze. “Now open your eyes and study the drawing.”
    After some moments, he forces a frown, because he doesn’t want Antonia to sense his delight. She’s under his spell. It’s not easy for an old man to control a young mind, but he has done so. The question is, can she slow down and work out how he is controlling her?
    “Close your eyes again.”
    “I haven’t finished studying.”
    “Close your eyes!” She does so. “And when I tell you to open them, I want you to tell me, straightaway, what you look at first of all in the drawing. What takes your attention first?”
    “But I look at all the picture, Father.”
    “No, you don’t. Believe me, you don’t. Now open! Speak, what do you see first?”
    “A knight on a horse. It’s rearing on its hind legs.”
    “Where is it positioned on the drawing?”
    “Slightly left of the centre.”
    “And what else makes you notice this knight?”
    “His huge hat.”
    “Good. And what next? After you see this knight on horseback, what do you notice next?”
    “I look at the far right of the drawing—there’s another knight in armour on a horse. His horse is rearing, but not so much as the first one.”
    “And what connects the two knights on their rearing horses?”
    “Connects?”
    “Is there something in the painting that joins the two knights?”
    “Ah! Let me see. There’s a lance.”
    “Describe it.”
    “The lance,” she closes her fists tight, “is almost horizontal, and the two ends of the lance join—”
    “Yes. I